Advice from PTO Today

Craig writes:
Cultivating new officers takes work, and it's something that often is given little attention until elections roll around. First of all, if you're burned out, it's perfectly OK to scale back (drastically if necessary) on what you do. But don't cut back to just having meetings. You're unlikely to find new officers that way. People get energized by a feeling of accomplishment and camaraderie. You can get that at activities and events but rarely at meetings—especially as a newcomer. If anything, cut back to a couple of meetings a year to give yourselves more time to organize a few activities.

Grooming someone into a potential officer takes time. It doesn't begin with an email saying "We need a vice president and we thought of you." It starts when a parent comes to a few school activities and has fun. Those positive experiences get the parent interested in volunteering. After some positive volunteering experiences, that person might take over a committee. Your experienced committee chairs become your potential new officers. We call this the Ladder of Involvement. People rarely start on the top rung (officer); they start at the bottom (attending an event) and work their way up a rung at a time.

Another thing that's important in attracting new officers is to make it clear to them that they won't be all alone. If you're giving off the message that "we're all burned out and we need someone to take over," that leaves a potential new officer feeling like she's likely to be on an island with little help. Do you have a system in place--for instance, binders that describe the key steps for each job and include resources and tips that the person will need to be successful? Anything you can show to a potential officer to let her know she won't be reinventing the wheel—and to minimize that fear of being overwhelmed—will help a lot.

Finally, have you considered co-officer positions? Having a co-president and co-treasuer, in particular, gives people a year of training and seeing first hand how things work before they take over the job themselves. That can certainly help a person's comfort level about getting involved. You'll find some helpful information on our Elections & Transition page. In particular, the article How To Create a PTO Procedures Book has a lot of information and links on putting together binders to help new officers. Good luck!

• Report Abuse Nonsense Spam